Gibson also received endorsements from influential evangelical leaders, including Billy Graham, pastor Robert Schuller, Christianity Today editor David Neff, Focus on the Family founder and chairman James Dobson, 700 Club host Pat Robertson, author Lee Strobel, Liberty University founder Jerry Falwell, devotional author Max Lucado, Left Behind author Tim LaHaye, and former Nixon official and Prison Fellowship founder Chuck Colson. Eight months before the film’s release, he started screening the film at conferences attended by hundreds or even thousands of pastors, hosted by megachurches pastored by major figures such as Ted Haggard (who was then president of the National Association of Evangelicals), Joel Osteen, and Rick Warren. In a savvy move, he targeted pastors, likely realizing the massive influence they exerted over their congregations.
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Gibson made a point of reaching out to American evangelicals as a way to mobilize a huge marketing base. (Its interpretation of the events leans heavily on traditional Catholic imagery.) Churches bought blocks of tickets and rented out entire theaters to ensure opening weekend success for the film, which opened on Ash Wednesday, the traditional start to the Lenten season (the 40-day period leading up to Easter). However, the subject matter of The Passion made both Protestants and Catholics a prime market for the film. Those films typically make less than their PG-13 rated siblings, and with the exception of certain war films, the churchgoing audience is rarely the target audience for an R-rated film. But it became a huge hit partly because it drew an audience that would rarely go to an R-rated film. The movie, which follows Jesus through the final 12 hours of his life, is brutal and bloody (as befits its subject), and it deserves its R rating. The unprecedented runaway success of The Passion of the Christ turned the industry on its ear. Simply put, prior to T he Passion of the Christ, the faith-based film industry as we know it today (your God’s Not Deads and Heaven Is For Reals and Left Behinds) essentially did not exist, aside from a handful of apocalyptic movies and dramas produced by the Billy Graham Evangelistic Assocation’s World Wide Pictures in the 1970s and early 1980s. Here’s how the 2004 film changed how religious films are made and sold, and what that change could mean for the sequel’s potential as the “biggest film in history.” The Passion of the Christ more or less defined the market for faith-based films When it’s released, Gibson’s Passion sequel will be entering a much different cultural context for faith-based films, one it helped dramatically reshape nearly 15 years ago. But when The Passion of the Christ came out, it was a bona fide phenomenon, raking in over $370 million at the US box office - it’s still the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time, and that’s by a very long shot if you adjust for inflation - and spawning an entire industry of faith-based films and marketing agencies.
![the passion of christ movie three crosses the passion of christ movie three crosses](https://www.pluggedin.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/thepassionofthechrist-1024x768.jpg)
In 2004, Gibson had trouble getting any studios to sign onto the project, eventually financing it himself. That may not be as hyperbolic as it sounds.
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It’s that good,” Caviezel told USA Today. “The film he’s going to do is going to be the biggest film in history. Mel Gibson is making a sequel to his 2004 megablockbuster The Passion of the Christ, and Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in that film, will reprise his role.